Blood Ravens: The perfect example of what a "fan made" chapter can be.

One of my favourite bits of trivia about the first DoW is that it was this game that introduced the two-handed Thunderhammer to the wider series. Guys at GW thought it was awesome and back ported it to the tabletop, before there had only been one handed hammers wielded by Terminators. Titus using the Thunderhammer in Space Marine 1 and 2 just shows how enduring it is.

I have gone with the belief that the Blood Ravens are a loyalist Thousand Sons successor chapter. Their color scheme is based off the Great Crusade color scheme for the Thousand Sons, their gene seed tends to awaken psykers, and they wouldn't be the only chapter descended from a traitor primarch. The Heresy had many from the traitor legions remain loyal, after all. And they did contribute to the Second Founding, even if their ties to the traitor legions were expunged and it was sanitized as them being descended from another primarch.

The Ravens were involved on Graia as well, and there's the suggestion that Titus had fought alongside them at a prior date

What I hope with all these sequels of Warhammer games we get Fire warrior 2. Imagine a whole game about the Tau dealing with the great rift.

A problem with the Thousand Sons gene lineage is that they have never shown signs of the "Flesh Change" either.

To be fair it is confirmed they have a lot of relics that they acquired through questionable means

For the record, it isn't Relic Entertainment making the fourth game but King Art Games, well known for the RTS Iron Harvest. GW looked at the game and called them up to probe about what they would do if given the go ahead to do a 40K game. And here we are! Yes, yes, yes!

I can't help but wonder if maybe the reason for the destruction of those records and relics from Kronus is because it showed the Blood Ravens hail from one of the two disavowed space marine legions.

I think a lot of the Blood Ravens's popularity has to do with Gabriel Angelos. He's kind of the archetypal Space Marine commander in my mind, as close to a paladin as you can get in the setting. Plus his voice actor gave him a lot of gravitas.

"This video is a lost relic of our chapter"

1:21 Steve Blum is that you…?

I still have a desire to make a blood Ravens meme army that has repainted models from other chapters and units that have bolt cutters on their belts and other just random stuff because it's funny

It's also worth mentionning that the color scheme of the Blood Ravens is cool and take part in the popularity ^^

I'm a simple man. I see Blood Ravens - I click.

With their lust for knowledge and high psyckers count I wonder if they're a hybrid chapter maybe the thousand sons and someone else?

There is a theory that their gene seed comes from the thousand sons but specifically Revual Arvida who was the last surviving member of the thousand sons corvid cult aka raven cult. Although Revual Arvida has a more well known name that being Janus the first supreme grandmaster of the grey knights. This could explain why the grey knights help the blood ravens even against non-chaos forces and why the inquisition goes out of its way to hide information about the blood ravens creation as it would not only expose the grey knights and the blood ravens using traitor gene seed it also exposes the fact that most of the grey knights founders were from traitor legions. Although this is all just a theory and should not be viewed as cannon.

I do think there was a point when GW was planning on them being Thousand Sons. In the early Horus Heresy stuff they had some direct connections made that felt like set up... which then was entirety dropped later on.

Specifically in Burning of Prospero we had a psyker have a vision he describes as: "Oh Throne... no, the blood! The Ravens, i see them too! The lost sons and a raven of blood. They cry out for salvation and knowledge, but it is denied"

If I remember correctly, the Force Commander canonically got the "Semi-Corrupted" Ending of Chaos Rising, so he got sent off on a penitent crusade. Might be wrong on that, however. You got everything else right, though; Thule & Thaddeus are currently MIA out-of-universe (aka; we dunno what happened to 'em post Chapter Civil War, thought if the opening to the Chaos Campaign is any indication then Thule got spiked by Eliphas. Though as stated, it's unknown what if any of the other campaigns or how far those campaigns went in Retribution are canon), Avitus went Chaos in Rising, Tarkus took up a penitent oath of silence as a consequence and a new name as "The Ancient", and Cyrus is now a Captain and has crossed the rubicon (aka: gotten the Primaris upgrade).

I know their just a game chapter, but man I love the bloody ravens.
My intro to warhammer and still awesome decades later.